An existence was interrupted. A death was arbitrarily hastened because nourishing a person can never be considered employing exceptional means.Click here for more.
Quaesumus, Domine, pro tua pietate miserere animae famulae tuae Teresia, et a contagiis mortalitatis exutam, in aeternae salvationis partem restitue. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.The strife is o'er, the battle done. After 13 days of painful starvation, Terri Schindler-Schiavo has finally been called home to God, where she will attain justice and receive the love and care she has so richly deserved this whole time. I mourn for those of us left behind to pick up the pieces of this travesty. We must not let this cause die with her, and fight even more fervently for life, liberty, and the common good. May God be with us, and may the angels be with Terri today in paradise. (News article)
Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine,
Et lux perpetua luceat ei.
Requiescat in pace. Amen.
AN EARTHQUAKE HAS OCCURRED WITH THESE PRELIMINARY PARAMETERSFor more information, click here. For the related AP article, click here.
ORIGIN TIME - 1610Z 28 MAR 2005
COORDINATES - 2.3 NORTH 97.1 EAST
LOCATION - NORTHERN SUMATERA INDONESIA
MAGNITUDE - 8.5
EVALUATION
THIS EARTHQUAKE IS LOCATED OUTSIDE THE PACIFIC. NO TSUNAMI THREAT
EXISTS TO COASTLINES IN THE PACIFIC.
WARNING... THIS EARTHQUAKE HAS THE POTENTIAL TO GENERATE A WIDELY
DESTRUCTIVE TSUNAMI IN THE OCEAN OR SEAS NEAR THE EARTHQUAKE.
Their hopes fading and legal options exhausted, Terri Schiavo's parents appeared quietly resigned Sunday to watching her die but could claim one Easter victory: The severely brain-damaged woman received a drop of communion wine on her tongue - her only sustenance in nine days - after her husband..., who a day earlier denied a request from his wife's parents that she be given communion, granted permission Sunday to offer the sacrament.Well, that is something to rejoice about. But, as always, the media always offers something to gripe about as well:
At St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Church in Clearwater, Father Ted Costello scrupulously avoided mentioning the Schiavo case in Easter Mass. Parishioner Bill Youmans said that was a good thing.Well, I think it worthy to note that my Bishop, a holy and wonderful pastory, mentioned Terri at the Chrism Mass, Holy Thursday morning, and I didn't think it at all imprudent, nor did I when my parish priest mentioned the same on Holy Thursday and briefly at the Easter Vigil. I'll forgive the 76-year-old retiree, hoping for his sake that his comment is due to slight senility that might come as such an age... or the fact that he's from Michigan. But I take issue with his language. "Giving Jesus a bad name" is something hard to do. One must almost deliberately do evil, in His name. Even a person doing wrong, but thinking that they are acting for the good, in Jesus' name, does Him honor.
"I don't think that's got anything to do with Easter," the 76-year-old retiree from Michigan said. "I thought the church's teaching is not to take extraordinary measures to perpetuate life. ... I think all those people bleating in Schiavo's front yard give Jesus a bad name."
And Sion said: "The Lord hath forsaken me, and the Lord hath forgotten me."
Can a woman forget her infant, so as not to have pity on the son of her womb? and if she should forget, yet will not I forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee in my hands...(See IS 56)
Can. 1184It seems to me that the stipulation in #1184 part 3 is met here, cuz I'M SCANDALIZED!
1. Unless they gave some signs of repentance before death, the following must be deprived of ecclesiastical funerals:1- notorious apostates, heretics, and schismatics;2. If any doubt occurs, the local ordinary is to be consulted, and his judgment must be followed.
2- those who chose the cremation of their bodies for reasons contrary to Christian faith;
3- other manifest sinners who cannot be granted ecclesiastical funerals without public scandal of the faithful.
Can. 1185 Any funeral Mass must also be denied a person who is excluded from ecclesiastical funerals.-Code of Canon Law
"The Congregation [for Divine Worship] affirmed the liturgical requirement that only the feet of men be washed at the Holy Thursday ritual." However, the Congregation did "provide for the archbishop to make a pastoral decision."Well, I'm irritated.
The Gospel of life is for the whole of human society. To be actively pro-life is to contribute to the renewal of society through the promotion of the common good. It is impossible to further the common good without acknowledging and defending the right to life, upon which all the other inalienable rights of individuals are founded and from which they develop. A society lacks solid foundations when, on the one hand, it asserts values such as the dignity of the person, justice and peace, but then, on the other hand, radically acts to the contrary by allowing or tolerating a variety of ways in which human life is devalued and violated, especially where it is weak or marginalized. Only respect for life can be the foundation and guarantee of the most precious and essential goods of society, such as democracy and peace.Have a nice day.
There can be no true democracy without a rec- ognition of every person's dignity and without respect for his or her rights.
Nor can there be true peace unless life is defended and promoted. As Paul VI pointed out: "Every crime against life is an attack on peace, especially if it strikes at the moral conduct of people... But where human rights are truly professed and publicly recognized and defended, peace becomes the joyful and operative climate of life in society".
The "people of life" rejoices in being able to share its commitment with so many others. Thus may the "people for life" constantly grow in number and may a new culture of love and solidarity develop for the true good of the whole of human society.
"I must confirm the moral judgment which does not change: It is an illicit and grave act," Bishop Sgreccia told Vatican Radio.The legal action must not stop with Schiavo's death, which is impending. We have to seek a way to prosecture the perpetrators of this homicide.
Bishop Sgreccia [President of the Pontifical Academy for Life] explained that the decision of the U.S. justice "is not euthanasia in the literal sense of the term; it is not a 'good death,' it is a death that is induced in a cruel way. It is not a medical act. It is about taking water and food away to cause death."
The bishop criticized "a mechanism of exaggeration that seeks to favor the legitimization of so-called euthanasia, in cases such as this one in which interests of another kind are often at stake."
And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And I pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgment not be too heavy upon us
Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.
Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.- T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday, I
Who else is it who calls us back from the death of error, except the life that does not know death, and the wisdom which, needing no light, enlightens minds which are in darkness, that wisdom by which the whole world, even to the leaves of trees drifting in the wind, is governed?- Saint Augustine, Confessions, VII, 6
Today, as a result of advances in medicine and in a cultural context frequently closed to the transcendent, the experience of dying is marked by new features. When the prevailing tendency is to value life only to the extent that it brings pleasure and well-being, suffering seems like an unbearable setback, something from which one must be freed at all costs. Death is considered "senseless" if it suddenly interrupts a life still open to a future of new and interesting experiences. But it becomes a "rightful liberation" once life is held to be no longer meaningful because it is filled with pain and inexorably doomed to even greater suffering...Our culture is truly one of death. Vatican II talked about how the end of life brings man's awareness of his condition of original sin to the foreground; but now it seems to bring equally to mind the condition of actual sin and evil in the world. We see it on CNN everyday; the obituaries are the least tragic parts of our newspapers; our movies throw gratuitous violence on the screen without rhyme or reason but a beautiful and devout passion film (the only justified example) is the only one about which anyone seems to get enraged; we watch gleefully the antics of "desperate housewives" when all over the world housewives fight truly desperate battles to feed and clothe their children. And as politicians debate, judges play God, a husband sets up book deals and TV spots, and millions of Americans go about their day consuming their dollar-menu death an ounce at a time, a woman agonizingly starves in a hospice in Florida, unable to give voice to her pain. That responsibility falls to us...
In this context the temptation grows to have recourse to euthanasia, that is, to take control of death and bring it about before its time, "gently" ending one's own life or the life of others. In reality, what might seem logical and humane, when looked at more closely is seen to be senseless and inhumane. Here we are faced with one of the more alarming symptoms of the "culture of death", which is advancing above all in prosperous societies, marked by an attitude of excessive preoccupation with efficiency and which sees the growing number of elderly and disabled people as intolerable and too burdensome. These people are very often isolated by their families and by society, which are organized almost exclusively on the basis of criteria of productive efficiency, according to which a hopelessly impaired life no longer has any value.
- Ioannes Paulus PP. II, Evangelium Vitae, 64
